International Desk: Dhaka, Sept-12,
The FBI late Saturday released a newly declassified document related to logistical support given to two of the Saudi hijackers in the run-up to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The document details contacts the hijackers had with Saudi associates in the U.S. but does not provide proof that senior Saudi government officials were complicit in the plot.
Released on the 20th
anniversary of the attacks, the document is the first investigative record to
be disclosed since President Joe Biden ordered a declassification review of
materials that for years have remained out of public view. The 16-page document
is a summary of an FBI interview done in 2015 with a man who had frequent
contact with Saudi nationals in the U.S. who supported the first hijackers to
arrive in the country before the attacks.
Biden last week ordered
the Justice Department and other agencies to conduct a declassification review
and release what documents they can over the next six months. He had
encountered pressure from victims’ families, who have long sought the records
as they pursue a lawsuit in New York alleging that Saudi government officials
supported the hijackers.
The heavily redacted
document was disclosed on Saturday night, hours after Biden attended Sept. 11
memorial events in New York, Pennsylvania and northern Virginia. Victims’
relatives had earlier objected to Biden’s presence at ceremonial events as long
as the documents remained classified.
The Saudi government
has long denied any involvement in the attacks. The Saudi Embassy in Washington
has it supported the full declassification of all records as a way to “end the
baseless allegations against the Kingdom once and for all.” The embassy said
that any allegation that Saudi Arabia was complicit was “categorically false.”
The trove of documents
are being released at a politically delicate time for the U.S. and Saudi
Arabia, two nations that have forged a strategic — if difficult — alliance,
particularly on counterterrorism matters. The Biden administration in February
released an intelligence assessment implicating Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman in the 2018 killing of U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi, but drew
criticism from Democrats for avoiding a direct punishment of the crown prince
himself.
Victims’ relatives
cheered the document’s release as a significant step in their effort to connect
the attacks to Saudi Arabia. Brett Eagleson, whose father, Bruce, was killed in
the World Trade Center attack, said the release of the FBI material
“accelerates our pursuit of truth and justice.”
Jim Kreindler, a lawyer
for the victims’ relatives, said in a statement that “the findings and
conclusions in this FBI investigation validate the arguments we have made in
the litigation regarding the Saudi government’s responsibility for the 9/11
attacks.
“This document,
together with the public evidence gathered to date, provides a blueprint for
how (al-Qaida) operated inside the US with the active, knowing support of the
Saudi government,” he said.
That includes, he
added, Saudi officials exchanging phone calls among themselves and al-Qaida
operatives and then having “accidental meetings” with the hijackers while
providing them with assistance to get settled and find flight schools.
Regarding Sept. 11,
there has been speculation of official involvement since shortly after the
attacks, when it was revealed that 15 of the 19 attackers were Saudis. Osama
bin Laden, the leader of al-Qaida at the time, was from a prominent family in
the kingdom.
The U.S. investigated
some Saudi diplomats and others with Saudi government ties who knew hijackers
after they arrived in the U.S., according to documents that have already been
declassified.
Still, the 9/11
Commission report in 2004 found “no evidence that the Saudi government as an
institution or senior Saudi officials individually funded” the attacks that
al-Qaida masterminded, though it noted Saudi-linked charities could have
diverted money to the group.
Particular scrutiny has
centered on the first two hijackers to arrive in the U.S., Nawaf al-Hazmi and
Khalid al-Mihdhar and support they received.
In February 2000,
shortly after their arrival in southern California, they encountered at a halal
restaurant a Saudi national named Omar al-Bayoumi who helped them find and
lease an apartment in San Diego, had ties to the Saudi government and had
earlier attracted FBI scrutiny.
Bayoumi has described
his restaurant meeting with Hazmi and Mihdhar as a “chance encounter,” and the
FBI during its interview made multiple attempts to ascertain if that
characterization was accurate or if it had actually been arranged in advance,
according to the document.
The 2015 interview that
forms the basis of the documentwas of a man who was applying for U.S.
citizenship and who years earlier had repeated contacts with Saudi nationals
who investigators said provided “significant logistical support” to several of
the hijackers. Among his contacts was Bayoumi, according to the document.
The man’s identity is
redacted throughout the document, but he is described as having worked at the
Saudi consulate in Los Angeles.
Also referenced in the
document is Fahad al-Thumairy, at the time an accredited diplomat at the Saudi
consulate in Los Angeles who investigators say led an extremist faction at his
mosque. The document says communications analysis identified a seven-minute
phone call in 1999 from Thumairy’s phone to the Saudi Arabian family home phone
of two brothers who became future detainees at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
prison.
Both Bayoumi and
Thumairy left the U.S. weeks before the attacks.
End/Dct/Ind/Sma/
